It was so cold in the old city of Prague on the Sunday afternoon I took this photo that it makes me shiver to remember it, but walking through the narrow, winding streets, turning a corner and coming upon someone playing a violin was like being in a fairytale. And every day, I went out into winter with the friend I was visiting — bundled, layered, walking and taking the tram, watching my breath make clouds in the air, stopping for wine or coffee, unlayering, bundling back up, taking photos of snow falling. I leaned into the cold, accepted it, lived it. Today at home in Charleston, it’s 48 degrees, nothing approaching that week in Prague, but I am flinching from the cold, recoiling, running home to escape it. Instead of walking through my neighborhood or in the downtown city streets, I layer on pajamas, fuzzy socks, a long-sleeved tshirt under an old cashmere sweater. If I were in a fairytale, it would be about a woman who turns into a bear at the first frost. When Persephone goes underground and everything on earth is waiting and storing energy for the spring, why can’t I embrace all the lovely bare, spare planes of her winter face? Why don’t I expect a violinist around every corner in my own hometown?

6 Responses to “Missing the Music”

For two years in Belgium, I didn’t have a car. Belgium, known for the howling wind off the North Sea and near constant gray skies and rain. I walked and rode and carried my groceries for miles and saw the world up close.

Back in America, I vowed to live a little like a European, but quickly reverted to circling the parking lot at the Supercenter, looking for the closest parking space to the door.

wouldn’t it be great to just step into that photo and hear the music on the wind?

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It's not on a map. There's no zip code, area code, dress code. There's a honky tonk just down the road, the moon is always full, maybe there's a pecan tree in the backyard and an old red truck in the driveway, the houses are faded aqua and neon pink, Frida Kahlo is the patron saint, and I'd live here full-time if I could...this is my ode to inspiration.

Founder and former Publisher of Skirt! Magazine. Writer, editor, blue Kentucky girl exiled in South Carolina, country mouse longing for a penthouse, sometime recluse, sometime party girl.

The things that inspire me to turn off tv and turn on imagination, to get off my couch and get creative, plus bits and pieces on keeping a journal, the writing craft, collagery, photography and assorted other arty alchemy.